Post Mission Incident
by Lialane Graest
Summary: Young!Stein and Young!Spirit have just returned home from a grueling mission. Will Spirit still be protective of his meister?


Stein and Spirit walked into the lab, their young bodies exhausted from the grueling mission they had just gotten back from. Spirit stepped out of his shoes and collapsed on the couch that he insisted they have, and Stein just shook his head, staggering up the stairs and into the shower. He stared at the pink water for a moment before it registered what it was.

The stinging came a second later, and the boy glanced at his side. Embedded in it was a shard of something. _'Probably glass from when we fell through the roof window.'_ Stein thought absent mindedly, and he reached out to gingerly touch it. Steeling himself he gripped the glass and yanked it free.

Blood poured from the wound, and Stein staggered, pain rushing through his body. Losing his balance, the boy grabbed the shower curtain and toppled to the ground with a loud crash, his head slamming hard into the floor. The water continued to run in the shower as Stein bled onto the floor, unconscious; the piece of glass, barely the size of a scalpel but cruelly barbed, lay on the flood inches from the bleeding boy.

The crash from upstairs jerked Spirit from his almost comatose slumber on the couch. "Hey, Stein, you alright up there?" Spirit staggered to his feet and up the stairs when he didn't get an answer. "Hey, Stein?" He called out as he knocked on the door.

There was still no answer, but the water was running in the shower and Spirit shrugged, turning to leave when something slightly warm hit his bare foot, slipping out from underneath the bathroom door. He glanced down, shock running through his body.

It was blood.

Spirit froze. It took a long second for him to reach out and try the knob- the door was of course locked. "Of course it's locked." He said sarcastically to himself. "To prevent someone from walking in on him." Spirit took a few steps back, and rammed his shoulder into the door.

It shuddered, but didn't open. He repeated the process, wincing as the wood cracked. It took four more solid shoves for the door to break enough for him to push it open.

Spirit's eyes widened. Stein lay on the floor, the shower curtain (thankfully) wrapped around his naked body, blood in a large pool around his head and torso. The boy's chest was raising and falling, but he was obviously unconscious. "Oh shit!" Spirit hissed out, moving to turn off the water.

"42-42-564 Whenever you want to knock on Death's Door." He muttered, scribbling the numbers into the foggy mirror. A second later the fog disappeared as the mirror shimmered and a cartoonish looking Lord Death appeared in it.

"Well hello Spirit-kun! How did your mission go? It was a success yes?" He asked in that ridiculously childish voice.

"Lord Death, I'm sorry, but I have an emergency. Stein's unconscious and bleeding badly. I don't have the training to help him; the wound in his side is bigger than what we've been trained for!" Spirit answered in a rush.

If Lord Death's mask had emotions, worry would have certainly crossed it. "Stein-kun is injured? But how?"

"Who cares how? My meister is bleeding to death on the floor!" Spirit exclaimed, and then shock took over the look of worry on the weapon's face. "Lord Death, I am so so-"

Lord Death interrupted. "Don't apologize. I'm sending someone; they'll be there as soon as possible. Until then, try to get the bleeding stopped, alright, Spirit-kun?"

The weapon just nodded, disappearing from the mirror's view as he gathered a couple of towels, placing one of them underneath Stein's head, the other he balled up and pushed against the youth's side. Spirit kept pressure on the wound, and after a few minutes the bleeding had slowed considerably.

Stein's head lolled to the side, and his eyes fluttered and opened. "Spirit?" The boy tried to sit up, but Spirit put a hand on his chest, holding him in place.

"You fell and hit your head- you were bleeding and unconscious, Stein." The redhead explained, never moving his hand from the other boy's side. "Lord Death is sending someone now to check you out. The bleeding still hasn't stopped."

Stein reached unsteadily down to his side and went to push Spirit's hand away. "I need to see the wound." The older boy just shook his head.

"Stein, it's still bleeding. Just hold on until whoever Lord Death sent gets here." Stein's hand fell away and he sighed.

"Senpai, I can handle the cut."

"You nearly bled to death, Stein!"

The younger boy was silent. A knock came from downstairs, and Spirit pressed Stein's hand against the towel. As the redhead left Stein noticed the amount of blood on Spirit's hands. He hazarded a look underneath the towel, and was shocked to see the amount of blood that the towel had absorbed. The gash in his side didn't even really hurt.

He pushed the towel back against it. _'Shock. That's what it is. I'm in shock.'_ He thought to himself. Pounding steps sounded on the staircase and Stein looked up as Spirit appeared briefly in the door. He stepped to the side and Stein scowled to see the DWMA's current nurse.

"Alright, let me see." She said, kneeling down beside him and removing the towel. The nurse's face contorted briefly. "Can you help me move him, Spirit-kun?"

Spirit nodded awkwardly, painfully aware that the only thing covering Stein was the shower curtain. The nurse stepped over Stein, and carefully turned the boy so that his feet were facing Spirit.

"I'm sure I can stand and walk." Stein objected. "I walked all the way home, after all."

"Grab his feet, Spirit-kun." She said, ignoring Stein's statement.

Spirit did as he was asked, and managed to go the entire way without seeing anything of Stein's. With a sigh he loaded an increasingly angry Stein into the ambulance and watch as they left to take the boy back to the DWMA. Shaking his head, Spirit went up to Stein's room and gathered up some clothing for the other boy. Leaving the clothing on the sofa Spirit started to clean up the blood in the bathroom, grimacing as he did. Spirit then took a quick shower and changed before the long walk to the hospital.

* * *

Stein passed out in the ambulance and didn't wake up until much later. He looked around the small room, bandages on his side and head.

"Senpai?!" Stein exclaimed softly. Spirit sat in the chair next to his bed, fast asleep. In Spirit's lap sat Stein's clothing, the red-head's hands resting on them while his head was tilted back. Spirit was snoring softly. Stein noted that there was no more blood on Spirit's hands.

"Ah, it's good that you're awake!" The nurse's voice came from the doorway. "Your weapon refused to leave once he got here; he's slept in that chair all night." She then pointed to a pot of flowers. "Those are from a Marie, the card says."

Stein smirked. _'Leave it to Marie to send something useless like that.'_ Aloud he asked, "When can I leave?"

"Well, that depends on you. Your wounds are taken care of, and if you're feeling strong enough you can go home now. Your weapon said he'd make sure you got back whenever you felt up to it." For the second time, Stein glanced over at Spirit. The weapon was still asleep.

"I'll wait on him to wake up, and then I'd like to leave."

The nurse smiled. "Just remember, we had to stitch the wounds so you-" Stein tuned the woman out at that point, he didn't need to be told how to deal with some stitches. "-one week to have them removed." Stein nodded.

He lay in bed for a while before Spirit woke up instantly, dumping the clothing on the floor. "Stein!" The weapon exclaimed, his eyes not quite focused.

"I'm not dead yet, Spirit." Stein said smugly. "We'll be leaving now that you're awake as well." Spirit blinked a few times.

"Wait, did the nurse clear that?" Spirit asked suspiciously.

"She did. Told me what to do about the stitches, when to remove them."

Spirit surprised Stein by laughing. "Guess she didn't know that you're the most skilled seamster in all of Death City."

Stein chuckled dryly. "I guess not."

* * *

Getting home proved to be tricky. Spirit ended up having to carry Stein, much to the younger boy's anguish.

"I can walk!" He muttered angrily, his arms draped over Spirit's shoulders as the older boy carried him piggy back.

"Yeah, yeah." Spirit agreed sarcastically, trudging onward.

Quite a while later the two boys reached the lab. Spirit stumbled slightly, and let Stein stand on his own as he opened the door. He returned, draping Stein's arm over his shoulder and helped the younger boy to his room. Stein was, blissfully for Spirit, silent through all of this. As the weapon turned to leave Stein's room the boy called out in a quiet voice.

"Senpai, thank you." Spirit didn't acknowledge it. He knew Stein wouldn't want him to. He just pulled the door shut behind him.

Spirit stumbled again when he left Stein's room, barely making it back to his own before he collapsed on his bed, exhausted. _'Guess Stein didn't know how long I'd actually slept.'_ He thought wryly before sleep claimed him.

* * *

Stein stood in the doorway to Spirit's room four hours later, restless after the amount of imposed sleep he had just had. He looked down dispassionately at the other boy, a scalpel swinging from the tips of his fingers. With a sigh he slipped the scalpel back into the pocket of his robe and wandered down to his lab.

"I suppose the least I can do is not experiment on him until my own stitches have come out." He reasoned with himself. "Then I'll have no risk of reopening the wound and we'll both be considerably stronger. It is important for subjects to be in the best of health, especially since my favorite one is also responsible for my safety on our missions." A chuckle escaped the boy as he sat down in front of his computer and started typing up notes for more experiments to conduct once his stitches were out.

Spirit tossed in his slumber, a shiver running through his sleeping body.

* * *

**A/N: I love Young!Stein and Young!Spirit. I hope that you enjoyed this rendition, though I still feel like something is off about it :( I'll appreciate your opinions on it though!  
**

**I don't own Soul Eater!**


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